It was Saturday, and the
little two-wheeled carts, drawn by a steer or a mule; the pigs
sleeping in the shadow of the old wooden market-house; the lean and
sallow pinelanders and listless negroes dozing on the curbstone, were
all objects of novel interest to the boy, as was manifest by the light
in his eager eyes and an occasional exclamation, which in a clear
childish treble, came from his perfectly chiselled lips. Only a glance
was needed to see that the child, though still somewhat pale and
delicate from his recent illness, had inherited the characteristics
attributed to good blood. Features, expression, bearing, were marked
by the signs of race; but a closer scrutiny was required to discover,
in the blue-eyed, golden-haired lad, any close resemblance to the
shrewd, dark man of affairs who sat beside him, and to whom this
little boy was, for the time being, the sole object in life.
But for the child the colonel was alone in the world. Many years
before, when himself only a boy, he had served in the Southern army,
in a regiment which had fought with such desperate valour that the
honour of the colonelcy had come to him at nineteen, as the sole
survivor of the group of young men who had officered the regiment. His
father died during the last year of the Civil War, having lived long
enough to see the conflict work ruin to his fortunes. The son had been
offered employment in New York by a relative who had sympathised with
the South in her struggle; and he had gone away from Clarendon.
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